I won't be long in this vale of tears; my works may run for a few more years, but even that is a risky bet, and the sports are hedging already yet. At morning a gent feels gay and nice; and evening finds him upon the ice, with his folded hands and his long white gown, and his toes turned up and his plans turned down. So, viewing this sad uncertainty, and hearing the wash of the Dead Man's sea, I want to chortle the best I can, and try to cheer up my fellow man; to make a...
Poems - Post by : jaimersteward - Date : November 2011 - Author :Walt Mason - Read : 2305

Like others, I'm grateful for plenty to eat; I'm fond of a plateful of rich turkey meat. For pies in the cupboard, and coal in the bin, for tires that are rubbered, and motors that spin; for all of my treasures, for all that I earn, for comforts and pleasures, my thanks I return. I'm glad that the nation is greasy and rich, acquiring high station with nary a hitch; her barns are a-bursting with mountains of grain; her people are thirsting for glory and gain. She'll ne'er backward linger, this land of our dads, for she is a...
Poems - Post by : amberstar702 - Date : November 2011 - Author :Walt Mason - Read : 2438

It is the day of kindness, and for this day we're freed from all the sordid blindness of selfishness and greed; we have a thought for others, we'd ease their load of care; and all men are our brothers, and all the world is fair. This is the day of laughter in no shadows fall; and 'neath the cottage rafter, and in the mullioned hall, are happy cries ascending, and songs of joy and peace; why should they have an ending? Why should the music cease? The music! When we hear it, we old men softly sigh; "Could...
Poems - Post by : arild24 - Date : November 2011 - Author :Walt Mason - Read : 2499

I like to find the gifted youth, the youth of brains and virtue, and whisper in his ears: "In truth, one flagon will not hurt you. He who eschews the painted breath is nothing but a fossil; just try a drink of liquid death--just join me in high wassail." At first my words may not avail, they but offend and fret him, but I keep camping on his trail until at last I get him. And having marked him for my own, I glory in the reaping; I feel that death, and death alone, can take him from my...
Poems - Post by : peterdobler - Date : November 2011 - Author :Walt Mason - Read : 2077

Now the day is fading slowly and the week is near its close; comes the Sabbath, calm and holy, with its quiet and repose; then the wheels no more are driven, and the noise no longer swells and like whisperings of heaven, sound the far-off Sabbath bells. Are we striving, are we reaching, for the life serene and sweet? Not by platitudes and preaching, not by praying on the street, but by doing deeds of kindness, comforting some heart that's sore, helping those who grope in blindness, giving something from our store. If it be our strong endeavor...
Poems - Post by : gooz123 - Date : November 2011 - Author :Walt Mason - Read : 2224

"My lads," quoth the father, "come forth to the garden, and merrily work in the glow of the sun; to loiter about is a crime beyond pardon, when there's so much hoeing that has to be done! It pains me to mark that you'd fain be retreating away from the hoes and such weapons as these; you're diligent, though, when the time comes for eating the turnips and lettuce and cabbage and peas." "Alas," sigh the boys, "that our father must work us like galley slaves, thus, at the hoe and the spade! More fortunate lads all have gone...
Poems - Post by : wholesaleguy - Date : November 2011 - Author :Walt Mason - Read : 1111

I sit all day in my gorgeous den and I am the boss of a hundred men; my enemies shake at my slightest scowl, I make the country sit up and howl; to the farthest ends of this blooming land men feel the weight of my iron hand. But, oh, for the old, old shop, Where I printed the Punktown Dirk, And the toil and stress with the darned old press That always refused to work! I soothe my face with a rich cigar and ride around in...
Poems - Post by : NNakamoto - Date : November 2011 - Author :Walt Mason - Read : 2425

The pumpmaker came to my humble abode, for the pump was in need of repair; his auto he left by the side of the road, and his diamonds he placed on a chair. And he said that the weather was really too cold, for comfort, this time of the year; and he thought from Japan--though she's haughty and bold--this country has nothing to fear. He thought that our navy should equal the best, for a navy's a warrant of peace; and he said when a man has a cold on his chest, there's nothing as good as goose grease....
Poems - Post by : acos21 - Date : November 2011 - Author :Walt Mason - Read : 3586

In the country of the bores people never shut the doors, and they leave the windows open, so you're always catching cold; and they lean against your breast while relating moldy jest that had long and flowing whiskers when by Father Adam told. In the country of the bores people carry sample ores, and they talk of mines prolific till you buy ten thousand shares; and they sell you orange groves and revolving fireless stoves, while they loll upon your divan with their feet upon your chairs. In the country of the bores every other fellow roars of the...
Poems - Post by : Kim_Manning - Date : November 2011 - Author :Walt Mason - Read : 2672

The summer days have gone their ways, to join the days of summers olden; the eager air is making bare the trees, the leaves are red and golden; the flowers that bloomed are now entombed, the morn is chill, the night is dreary; and I confront the same old stunt that all my life has made me weary. Hard by yon grove our heating stove is standing red and fierce and rusty; and I must black its front and back, and get myself all scratched and dusty. And I must pack it on my back, about a mile, up...
Poems - Post by : Sylvie_Laflamme - Date : November 2011 - Author :Walt Mason - Read : 1536

When I was younger kids were kids, in Kansas or in Cadiz; now all the boys are gentlemen, and all the girls are ladies. Where are the kids who climbed the trees, the tousled young carousers, who got their faces black with dirt, and tore their little trousers? Where are the lads who scrapped by rounds, while other lads kept tallies? The maids who made their pies of mud, and danced in dirty alleys? They're making calf-love somewhere now, exchanging cards and kisses, they're all fixed up in Sunday togs, and they are Sirs and Misses....
Poems - Post by : bohlken - Date : November 2011 - Author :Walt Mason - Read : 1098

Things are moving slowly? Business seems unholy? Better things are coming, though they seem delayed! Sitting down and scowling, standing up and growling, fussing round complaining will not bring the trade! Here comes Mr. Perkins for a quart of gherkins--don't begin to tell him all about your woes; you will only bore him, laying griefs before him, and he'll be disgusted when he ups and goes. Show him that you're cheerful, for the merchant tearful always jars his patrons, always makes them groan; they don't want to hearken to the ills that darken over you for they...
Poems - Post by : mattj - Date : November 2011 - Author :Walt Mason - Read : 2289

You've built up quite a city here, with stately business blocks, and wires a-running far and near, and handsome concrete walks. The trolley cars go whizzing by, and smoke from noisy mills is trailing slowly to the sky, and blotting out the hills. And thirty years ago I stood upon this same old mound, with not a house of brick or wood for twenty miles around! I'm mighty glad to be alive, to see the change you've made; it's good to watch this human hive, and hear the hum of trade! I list to the...
Poems - Post by : kalin35 - Date : November 2011 - Author :Walt Mason - Read : 1408

Some years ago I wrote a book, and no one read it save myself; it occupies a dusty nook, all sad and lonesome, on the shelf. And having found I couldn't write such stories as would please the mob, I sternly said, "I'll wreak my spite on those who can hold down the job." So now I sit in gloomy state and roast an author every day, and show he's a misguided skate who should be busy baling hay. The people read me as I cook my victims, and exclaim with glee, "If he would only write a...
Poems - Post by : Andrew2 - Date : November 2011 - Author :Walt Mason - Read : 2295

When things are moving slick as grease, it's easy to be moral then, to wear a gentle smile of peace, and talk about good will to men. Such virtue doesn't greatly weigh, in making up the books of life; the man who cheerful is and gay, in times of sorrow and of strife, is better worth a word of praise, than all the gents of smiling mien, who swear in forty different ways when life has ceased to be serene. This morning, as I ambled down, a neighbor fell (the walk was slick) and slid half-way across the town,...
Poems - Post by : Michael_LI - Date : November 2011 - Author :Walt Mason - Read : 3293

I used to trade at Grocer Gregg's and paid him heaps of cash for flour and cheese and germ-proof eggs, and cans of succotash. But now he doesn't get my trade--that's why his bosom aches; I had to quit him, for he made so many small mistakes. He'd send me stale and wilted greens when I had ordered fresh; he's send me gutta percha beans, all string and little flesh. And when I journeyed to his store to read the riot act, three score apologies or more he'd offer for the fact. That doggone clerk of his, he'd...
Poems - Post by : Gerry_Humphrey - Date : November 2011 - Author :Walt Mason - Read : 987

They like to make the people think that all their piles of yellow chink, are weary burdens, to be borne, with eyes that weep and hearts that mourn; but as you jog along the road, you see no millionaires unload. They like to talk and drone and drool, to growing youths in Sunday school, and tell them that the poor man's lot is just the thing that hits the spot; to warn them of ambition's goad--they talk, and talk, but don't unload. They like to talk of days long gone, when life for them was at its dawn, and...
Poems - Post by : Ron_Rea - Date : November 2011 - Author :Walt Mason - Read : 2136

Romance To walk again the open road I have a springtime longing; I yearn to leave my town abode, the jostling and the thronging, and tread again the quiet lanes, among the woodland creatures; where birds are singing joyous strains to beat the music teachers. Afar from honks of motor cars, and all the city's clamor, I'd like to sleep beneath the stars, and feel no katzenjammer when in the vernal dawn I wake, as chipper as the foxes, to eat my frugal oatmeal cake put up in paper boxes. I fain would revel in the breeze that blows...
Poems - Post by : profittrain - Date : November 2011 - Author :Walt Mason - Read : 2815

He was selling tacks and turnips in a gloomy corner store, and he never washed his windows and he never swept the floor, and he let the cobwebs gather on the ceiling and the walls, and he let his whiskers flourish till they brushed his overalls. So his customers forsook him--for his patrons were not chumps--and the sheriff came and got him and that merchant bumped the bumps. He was selling hens and hammocks, as he'd done since days of youth, and he queered himself with many, for he never told the truth. Oh, he thought it rather cunning...
Poems - Post by : coachlois - Date : November 2011 - Author :Walt Mason - Read : 2335

Old Bullion has a stack of rich things in his shack; of Persian rugs and antique jugs and costly bric-a-brac. There's art work in the hall, fine paintings on the wall; and yet a gloom as of the tomb is hanging over all. Here costly books abound. "This cost a thousand pound; that trade-mark blur means Elzivir--I've nothing cheap around. Here's Venus in the foam; the statue came from Rome; I bought the best the world possessed when I built up this home." Thus proudly Bullion talks, as through his home he walks, and tells the...
Poems - Post by : linsapp - Date : November 2011 - Author :Walt Mason - Read : 2436